Part 64 (1/2)
On these grounds a writ of _certiorari_ or _habeas corpus_ is sued out, the preliminary steps being a pet.i.tion from the prisoner or his friend, setting forth that he is illegally detained, an affidavit of verification, and a certificate of the clerk of the Court of Sessions that the commitment has not been filed in his office. Upon the presentation of these doc.u.ments, the judge to whom application is made issues the required writ, and specifies the time at which it shall be returnable. The action of the two writs is similar, excepting that a writ of _habeas corpus_ requires the production of the prisoner before the judge in addition to a return of the cause of detention, while a writ of _certiorari_ only requires a return of the cause of detention. The return is made by the person having custody of the prisoner, and consists of a copy of the commitment under which he is held; and, from the already-stated informality of these doc.u.ments, it will be apparent there can be no legal ground for his detention. The judge is strictly prohibited from entertaining any question beyond the legality of the papers; with the moral aspect of the question he can not interfere, and as the commitments are generally informal he has no alternative but to discharge the prisoner.
Application for these writs must be made in the name of an attorney, but such name is often used by an agent who transacts the business, and divides the fee with his princ.i.p.al.
From this sketch it will be evident that, if the prescribed form were observed in these commitments, frequent discharges would be avoided, or there would be so many difficulties to surmount that they would be very rarely attempted.
Does no responsibility rest upon the public, and on our law-makers, for negligence in this matter? Without conceding that a vagrancy commitment is likely to reform a prost.i.tute (in fact, the weight of evidence is against the possibility of its doing so), the case stands thus: the Legislature has provided a mode of relief which was deemed effectual at the time, but this mode is evaded, or can not be observed, by those upon whom its administration devolves. The public have long known the existence of these difficulties, but have never interfered to give us a better act. By their refusal to interfere they stand in the position of aiders and abettors in this neglect, or, worse than neglect, the actual propagation of a dreadful disease. Had public opinion been concentrated upon this matter, an inquiry would long ago have shown the fallacy of our present system, and suggested the required amendments. This has not been done; but public remissness in no way diminishes public responsibility.
This doctrine of public accountability may be profitably examined for a few moments in connection with the general aspect of prost.i.tution. Few will deny that the ma.s.s of the people are answerable for many of its evils. They are cognizant of the existence of vice in the aggregate, if not in detail; they can understand its effects, and are not ignorant of the princ.i.p.al causes which lead to it; yet they make no effort to remove existing causes or to prevent future evils. They practically treat women as an inferior race of beings, and can not even give a poor seamstress employment without saying, in fact if not in words, ”You can not be trusted to make this unless a man examines every b.u.t.ton hole, and inspects every row of st.i.tching, to see that you are not defrauding us.” The only way to secure confidence is to bestow confidence; but if a person is treated in a manner likely to destroy self-respect, the inevitable result will be a recklessness as to his or her own character. Despised without a cause; treated in mere business matters as imbeciles, or children, or thieves, it is not surprising that women become careless as to their future life, and, smarting under the injustice of their position, too frequently degenerate into the wretched beings who infest our streets and pollute the atmosphere with their deadly infection.
The public, then, are responsible for this prost.i.tution, because they have never bestowed any attention upon it. It is one of the gravest and most difficult of social problems, involving the interests of every man in the community, and yet the most stupid indifference has been shown respecting it. The subject has been canva.s.sed by medical men on account of its sad effects upon the physical organization; its extent has been known to judicial and police authorities from its social and civil results; but the great body of the public have hitherto decided that they know nothing, and want to know nothing about it. They admit its existence, being too evident to be denied; but so far they have taken no steps to ascertain its source or stay its progress, because it was a matter with which they were afraid to interfere, and now the deplorable consequences accruing from it must be laid to their charge.
It can not be denied that there are many difficulties attending any investigation of this vice; that many well-meaning but timid people entertain the opinion that it is one of those gangrenous ulcers upon society which can not be alluded to except in whispers; that more harm would result from inst.i.tuting inquiries than if it were allowed to exist and fester on unnoticed.[429] This apathy, which has heretofore been the policy, has made prost.i.tution the monster evil which it now is, and upon those who have advocated, or may advocate, a continuance of the same course of silence and inaction the sufferers from the vice may justly charge their destruction. The ”masterly inactivity” of the statesman is unquestionably justifiable in any case where pa.s.sive resistance will overcome an evil, but in dealing with prost.i.tution a diametrically opposite method must be pursued. It requires an active aggression upon all old prejudices; an explosion of still older theories; a vigorous commencement of a new course.
It has been shown elsewhere that the public are responsible for prost.i.tution, because they persist in excluding women from many kinds of employment for which they are fitted; while for work in those occupations which are open to them they receive an entirely inadequate remuneration.
It has also been shown that the community are equally responsible on account of their non-interference with known and acknowledged evils.
Another reason why accountability can not be evaded may be designated; namely, the carelessness, or, more properly, heartlessness, with which the character of woman is treated. Let there be but a breath of suspicion against her fair fame, no matter from what vile source it may emanate, and the energies of man seem directed toward her destruction. ”She is down, keep her down!” is the almost universal cry, and this malignant process is continued until the victim is positively forced into a life of undisguised immorality. The sacred decision, ”Let him that is without sin among you cast the first stone,” is entirely forgotten, and the most violent in their denunciations are frequently those who are the most blameworthy themselves.
The whole force of the world's opinion has been directed, not to the censure of actually guilty parties who induced the crime, but to the poor wronged sufferer. She, who is too frequently the victim of falsehood and deceit, or the slave of an absolute necessity, must expiate her fault by submitting to a constant succession of indignities and annoyances. He, whose conduct has made her what she is, escapes all censure. But some moralist will ask, ”How would you have us treat such women?” Treat them, sir, as human beings, actuated by the same pa.s.sions as yourself; as susceptible beings, keenly sensitive of reproach; as injured beings, who have a claim upon your kindness; as outraged beings, who have a demand upon your justice. Lead them into a path by which they can escape from danger; protect the innocent from the snares which environ them on every side. And when this is done, pour the vials of your hottest wrath on those of your own s.e.x whose machinations have blighted some of G.o.d's fairest created beings.
Public responsibility must be understood in its broadest and most literal sense, as meaning the individual accountability of every member of the community. The time has not yet arrived, unfortunately, when this matter can be left in the hands of corporations or legislatures. Their const.i.tuents must be aroused to consideration of its importance before any satisfactory action can or will be taken by them; and it is to the thinking men of the age that these pages are addressed, in the full confidence that so soon as their sympathies are enlisted public action will follow.
To this end an endeavor has been made to show the injurious effects of prohibition, disappointing expectation as a means of decreasing syphilis, or of curtailing the limits of prost.i.tution; the necessity which exists for effectual preventive measures; and the inefficient, or worse than inefficient, nature of the local arrangements of New York to accomplish this desideratum. Thus the way for a consideration of the remedial process has been opened, and now with such evidence as he has before him the reader may be asked, in all sincerity, if he does not seriously believe that _it would be a prudent step, instead of trying to extirpate the evil, to place prost.i.tutes and prost.i.tution under the surveillance of a medical bureau in the Police Department_? Extirpation never has been, never can be accomplished in any community; repression and restriction, as proposed, have been tried and have proved successful.
a.s.suming an affirmative answer to this question, and it is difficult to imagine it otherwise if the facts are dispa.s.sionately considered, attention is respectfully requested to the manner in which the change could be effected.
To meet the exigencies of the case there are required
(1.) A suitable hospital for the treatment of venereal disease;
(2.) A legally authorized medical visitation of all known houses of prost.i.tution, with full power to order the immediate removal of any woman found to be infected to the designated hospital;
(3.) The power to detain infected persons under treatment until they are cured, a term of time which none but medical men can decide.
By a suitable hospital is meant an inst.i.tution devoted to the treatment of such diseases, like the special hospitals of Paris and other Continental cities, and entirely removed from all connection with any punitive establishment. The rules proposed for the government of the Island Hospital, when its name was changed from Penitentiary Hospital, do not, by any means, meet the urgent requirements of the case. The Penitentiary, its officers and inmates, must be entirely shut out from the desired hospital, and no prison-warden or keeper of criminals must have any jurisdiction within its walls or over its grounds. Inmates of hospitals have too long endured the stupid interference of non-medical men, and it is time that medical law exclusively was considered in the direction and management of buildings devoted to medical purposes. This is especially necessary in a syphilitic hospital, on account of the character of its patients. _No amount of imprisonment as a punishment ever yet reformed a prost.i.tute, and it never will; all intercourse with prisoners, be it ever so transient, has but confirmed women in vice._
The tendency of imprisonment is directly contrary to any reformation, confirming previous habits instead of rooting them out. The instinctive dread of incarceration has prevented many from availing themselves of the medical advantages offered them, particularly among the better and higher grades of frail women. We want a hospital exclusively for the treatment of syphilis, with the power to place and keep there all women so diseased until cured. Matters of detail can be arranged in such a manner as to admit of a proper cla.s.sification, based upon the degree of moral turpitude belonging to each. Payment could and should be required from all who possess the means, for expenses actually incurred, and this would contribute a considerable sum to meet the expenditures of the inst.i.tution.
Among these women, as a body, there exists an excessive amount of pride.
Those of the upper cla.s.s will not a.s.sociate with any of a lower rank, and, in fact, look upon them in very much the same manner that moralists regard the whole body. To be enabled to reach them at all, a liberal management must be adopted. But will not this be deferring to vice because it is dressed in silks or satins? asks some one. Most decidedly not. Let the arrangements be what they might, such a hospital as described would afford no encouragement to vice, for in it all must submit to the same course of treatment, varied only in the minor accessories which surround it.
Even if the arrangements were exposed to an objection like the above, the end would justify the means. The city of New York contains, at this day, venereal infection sufficient to contaminate all the male population of the United States in a very short s.p.a.ce of time. It has been proved from official and medical statistics that this malady is rapidly on the increase, and a paramount question is, how to be relieved of the incubus.
Rigorous prohibitory measures will not effect this; they only make the matter worse. Punitive hospitals will not effect this; they have been tried and found wanting. Free inst.i.tutions would, in all probability, succeed in accomplis.h.i.+ng far more than any other measure our citizens have ever tried. The question is one, if not absolutely of life, certainly of healthy existence, and its inestimable importance must over-ride all doubts and difficulties. In view of the dangers surrounding our rising generation, even supposing the men and women of the present day exempt from them, it would be perfectly inexcusable to refuse any available plan because some one of its features might not please all tastes. Adopt an arrangement similar to that suggested, and if any crudities are discovered they can be readily cured as experience points them out. The plan is not presented as a perfect one, but merely as an outline sketch of what is necessary.
A regular medical visitation of all prost.i.tutes is an essential part of the scheme, and its organization should be a matter of serious consideration. The Parisian plan already submitted might form a very good basis; and an arrangement which throws the whole system of prost.i.tution open to an effective police supervision, and the establishment of a medical bureau in connection therewith for professional purposes, is suggested as most desirable. This medical visitation, conducted by physicians to be connected with the Police Department, and sustained by the power of that body, should be confided to men of recognized skill and known integrity. To insure public confidence, so essentially necessary in the inception of any social innovation, it would be necessary that the agents upon whom its execution devolved should be men of tried probity and acknowledged reputation, both professional and personal. The slightest symptom of disease should be sufficient evidence to warrant the immediate removal of any woman to the syphilitic hospital. The residence of any woman, be it temporary or permanent, in a known house of prost.i.tution must subject her to a medical examination, as it would afford a very strong presumption that she was there for immoral purposes.
The propriety of a medical examination of prost.i.tutes at certain intervals can not be doubted, and, in fact, it is practically admitted at the present time by some few of the brothel-keepers in the city. These pay a physician a liberal salary to visit their boarders every few days for the express purpose of carrying out the plan suggested now; resorting to treatment whenever he finds it necessary. Some of the most aristocratic houses of prost.i.tution are thus attended, but the system is in use more especially among those natives of Continental Europe who are now keeping houses of ill fame in New York, and who, in bringing to the New World many of the customs of the old, have thus testified to the benefit of the regulations enforced there.
But although such visiting physician may p.r.o.nounce a girl infected, the world has no security that she will not continue her avocation; and in order to remove all doubt upon this question she should be instantly removed to an inst.i.tution where she can not possibly propagate the malady.
This must be done under conjoint medical and police authority. Among prost.i.tutes of the lower grades systematic visitation is more imperatively necessary. They will not place themselves under medical treatment unless they are compelled, but until their disease a.s.sumes a character that prevents the possibility of farther concealment from their visitors, they continue to ply their loathsome and destructive trade. The summit of ambition with them is to keep their liberty; so long as they can earn enough to provide themselves a shelter, and feed their ravenous appet.i.te for intoxicating liquor, they are content to submit to the pains and ravages of syphilis, alike heedless of their own sufferings and the injuries they inflict on others. We have had cases under our own professional treatment where women have actually persevered in this course for many weeks after they had become aware they were diseased, solely for the reasons indicated.
It may be objected that such a plan would offer a premium to lewdness by circ.u.mscribing the dangers of infection; but this argument can have little weight, as it is scarcely possible that promiscuous s.e.xual intercourse can be carried on much more extensively than it is at present. The vice seems to have reached its culminating point. Experience proves that in all ages of the world there have been many men whose pa.s.sions were so violent and so ill regulated that they would attain their gratification at any risk, even though that risk included the probability of venereal infection. As in games of hazard every player hopes to be a winner, so in carnal indulgences every man flatters himself that, because some gratify their l.u.s.ts unscathed for a long series of years, so may he; that as. .h.i.therto he has escaped disease in his unhallowed amours, he may continue equally fortunate to the end of his career. This is confessedly a poor dependence, but it is the reliance of hundreds and thousands of the followers of her whose ”house is the way to h.e.l.l.”